Best Cipher Tools Available Now

Steve Fullmer

1 year ago

Have you read or watched The Imitation Game? Do you have a desire to explore the world of the code breaker?

In a former element of my career path I had the fortune to work with some of the best security officers and cryptographers in the banking industry, and potentially across the IT industry. Once a dragoman (decoder), always a dragoman?

We provide a small overview of cryptography in our CompTIA Security+ certification course, though barely enough to cover the multiple variants for concealing or obscuring information. We present steganography, simple rotation and substitution ciphers, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and a small range of data security techniques. The science is far broader. The goal is obfuscation – hiding valued content in plain sight so that only the informed might find or retrieve it.

As an avid geocacher, I have been hiding and seeking hidden treasure with my family for many years. It is always fun to discover the treasures that everyone else bypasses.

A few years ago, I discovered Ancient Societies , an online blog site preparing participants for the interactive, online multi-player game based on the book EndGame. Stella Vyctory, the site’s founder and hostess, provides sophisticated puzzles and challenges near daily for site followers (her ‘students’). Attempting to be amongst the first to solve the challenges, or perhaps even the hundredth to discover the meaning, can become addicting. A short review of top participants identifies some of the most talented cryptographers, linguists, crackers, and astute minds on the planet. It appears that everyone is part of the game, whether you play or not.

Through the process I discovered a number of online cryptanalysis (and semi-related) tools that might be of interest to both the security neophyte and the more seasoned professional. The following list isn’t necessarily comprehensive, though it will provide you an introduction to a world that creates and solves complex obfuscation problems.

Before I go much further down the programming path, you should probably be aware of MATLAB, [http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/online/] the ability to use a browser, iOS or Android system and collaborate while writing, debugging, or testing code. My son, an engineering student, and his friends pretty much live in MATLAB, making me feel like a neophyte.

Anagram Solver: Allow a computer to unjumble those letters into a meaningful word or phrase.

Although I knew some of these tools existed, I hadn’t considered using them to conceal information. Until a couple of puzzles combined both ciphers and language translators simultaneously. These tools would have simplified the efforts begun at Bletchley Park.

And looping back to where I began, most Geocaching clues are concealed using simple rotation ciphers. My children began learning them at a young age, and could almost read the messages without a translator. I wish my mind was so elastic.